One year of Women Are Boring

Women Are Boring was due to celebrate its first birthday on 5th May 2017. However, my co-founder Grace McDermott died tragically on 1st May. Grace’s fiancé Colin has written a beautiful homage to her, which you can read here. You can also donate to a charity in her memory by following this link.

While the blog is currently on a short hiatus, I wanted to write something small, for Grace, about what Women Are Boring has achieved in the fourteen months since we launched. We were blown away by the response to the site, and I continue to be humbled by the messages of support that we get every day. We worked really hard, and had so much fun as we did. We regularly told each other that it was one of the best things either of us had ever done. Every single moment of doing this with Grace was exciting and joyous, because we shared it together. We met at the beginning of our PhDs, in 2014. She felt like a friend I had been waiting for my whole life. My heart is broken, and I miss her more than words can say.

Through the site, we met wonderful people, read and shared fascinating research every day, and created a community of women in academia through the Women Are Boring forum, which now has over 600 members. The site received its first acknowledgement and citation in an academic journal in May 2017, and numerous contributors have been featured and quoted in news stories as a result of their contributions. To date, there have been more than 100,000 views of the site, from almost every country in the world. In the past year we took part in numerous events to talk about the women whose research is featured on the site, why academic research is so important, and why we need women experts featured in media. Grace and I hoped that in some small way we were achieving what we set out to do when we created the site – to increase public engagement with academic research, to enhance the visibility of the women doing that research, and to improve the representation of women as experts.

When we discovered that only 24% of experts quoted in news media in Ireland and the UK are women, we decided to create a space for expert women’s voices ourselves. We couldn’t have done so without our partners, our families, our friends, and most of all, the women who contribute their research to the site – it could not exist without them, and they have supported and championed the project from the very beginning. Thank you all so much.

What follows are the most popular posts from each month of the first year of Women Are Boring, along with some of our own favourites. It is such an honour to promote this research, and the women who conduct it. I’ve also included some of our media interviews, and pieces that Grace wrote for the site. I would really love for everyone to read these and to listen to our podcast interview, so as to hear Grace herself in her own funny, smart, ferocious, and always brilliant words.

Women Are Boring will be back with new pieces of fascinating research by interesting women at some point in the future. Thank you so much for reading.

Catherine both you and Grace have always had my love and admiration, not only for all you achieved in such a short time with Women are Boring but also all that the two of you have achieved in your lifetime to date. Both courageous, intelligent, curious, considerate witty young women. By continuing with this blog you are helping to keep Grace’s legacy & voice alive and going by your statistics fighting the good fight for women everywhere which Grace would want. I know you have the strength and conviction to keep this going. Jacqui

Grace admired you. She would be so proud and delighted at your commitment to keeping the blog going. Expanding on the work that you and Grace started together to highlight academic research and commentary addressing gender equality, and other relevant issues , is important. Grace’s family in the United States shares Grace’s admiration of you. We appreciate you keeping Gracie’s legacy alive. Well done, Catherine , and THANK YOU. ❤️

Well done, well done, well done for changing the narrative for anyone to ever search the words ‘women are boring’. I’ve only found your blog 20 minutes ago and am so sorry to hear about Grace. The story of her life inspires me, and this blog inspires me to be more than I am now. Thank you so much for being strong and putting this on a platform for people, I hope you do continue and that I can contribute in the future!